PureCycle’s Dustin Olson on Leaning into Technology and Innovating Sustainability

As with any business, expansion is overall a good thing--but it does come with its challenges. PureCycle has worked to strike a balance between keeping costs low via making their processes more efficient and using materials that are cheaper and expanding to new locations and working with new partners. 

Dustin also describes how having a "culture of bias to action" allows PureCycle to make decisions quickly and by extension lean into new technologies. Aside from its main values of innovation, sustainability, and recycling, PureCycle focuses on being as digital as possible.

In This Episode

Listen to Dustin Olson talk about PureCycle's culture of bias to action, staying connected to technology, focusing on sustainability, and more.

Episode summary 

Dustin Olson believes that PureCycle's mission is to innovate how polypropylene plastic is the future of sustainability. "At the end of the day, it's not marketing, it's not shows, it's not promise. It's just boots on the ground manufacturing excellence that gets it done." By focusing on technology, listening to people within the company, and celebrating even the small wins, PureCycle is proving him right. 

In our latest podcast episode, Dustin talks about the challenges that recycling faces as a whole and how PureCycle addresses those challenges in a unique, sustainable way. According to Dustin, people and companies generally want to recycle and commit to being more sustainable, but it's often difficult due to cost, inconvenience, or both. 

PureCycle's process takes plastic that might otherwise end up in a landfill, washes it to a pure and more versatile product, and gives it to the customer for use however they need. This process also means that those same products can be turned right back around and recycled again, indefinitely. 

At the core of all this innovation and vision? Working hard, grinding through the problems, being kind, staying humble, and leaning into technology.

Topics

• Why Dustin believes that sustainability is not just a marketing tactic, it's a business practice.  
• How leaning into technology and letting it guide innovation is the future of manufacturing.
• Why expansion of your business can be tricky: it involves balancing cost with growth. 
• How PureCycle's recycling process is unique and innovative, taking plastics that would otherwise end up in landfills and turning them into pure, versatile products.
• How PureCycle has learned to be nimble and make decisions quickly without sacrificing what's right for the business.
• Why a policy of listening within your company is a key practice for successful leadership.